Memories

There are last times for everything.
These are some impressions from the last time... just some random thoughts in the form of pictures. They might say more than a thousand words (each), which is good for me (it's late) and you (reading many thousand words from me might not be a pure pleasure).

Without any further ado:

It's cold, people chatting all around, the air smells of hot spicy wine:



BT might be boring in places, but there's always something to be done to cheer one up. The place on the left is the very first store I ever went into in BT, to buy a street map there on my very first day:





Moo. Is there anything I can do to make myself understood?



Some other old places... not many cheerful things happened right here.





At least it's dynamic.



This was better - the BT New Year's Eve Concert in the Markgräfliches Opernhaus:





If one stays behind for long enough after everybody else left, the Opernhaus starts getting some desolate, gloomy FPS Last-Man-Standing level atmosphere:



Winter. Life has come to a standstill:



... but it always finds a way - even if it's a scary one:



Another still life.



Finally - I think I am receiving something!

Optimal Optimization Principle

In terms of workspace efficiency, I suspect the peak has already been passed with the current RONAF setup in the lab.



And! The bulu-squirrels have returned:

Kwak

No comment.

Binge Conferencing

I was sent to a meeting of a German engineering society, specifically aimed at medical robotics, the other day. Since it was on short notice and using the train was therefore prohibitively expensive, I went there (to Braunschweig) by ShabuShabu.

An interesting selection of presentations, an impressive lab tour, and lots of driving. Braunschweig itself completely escaped me.



A small part of the oil refinery at Leuna, East Germany, on the way back.

Poland 2

Fog rising over Polish fields.


Standard Czestochowa living place.


A Czestochowa view.


Confessionals in Jasna Gora.


Solidarnosc memorial (in Jasna Gora, too).


A Jasna Gora assembly hall.


Downtown Czestochowa pedestrian area.

Poland

Tonight, my Dad will come over for a night, and tomorrow morning we'll go to Poland for a 4-day trip (actually just a two-day stay) to visit the family. (Usually he stops by to drop off his car and get mine to drive to Poland to prevent his being stolen.) The new year just started, there's lots of holidays still to be spent away from work, and I need a change, and there's a project where my Dad needs my help, too.
The family is extensive to the point not to be understandable any more, and the last time I have been to Poland at all was 2003. Visiting the family was even longer ago. I wonder if they'll recognize me at all, not to mention the other way round (as my face memory is horribly bad).

One more thing... what a letdown.

Hm. No live stream of the Macworld Keynote. Probably everybody alive and his mother except for the author knew that.

One more thing... the iRack!

Granted, the idea for the iRack isn't mine (it came from some YouTube video - "Apple presents the iRack"). Still, I built one for my lab workplace:



Furthermore, tonight's the big night: Steve will hold the Keynote talk at this year's Macworld again! The reality distortion field in action. And since more and more of us are being converted into fanboys (and fangirls, although we're not yet voting for our Mac Chick of the Month), there'll be our own small Macworld Appraisal convention at the GSP! A large-screen projection of the Keynote at 18:00 CET!

And finally: Stefan K. came up with the idea of a Coding Run Night - meet at 21:00 next Monday and code through the night! Memories of the second semester Datenstrukturen course programming returning.

Acre Hat

Yesterday we bid Acre farewell, as he had his doctoral thesis defense. His work centered around camera-based contact state detection of deformable linear objects, his private life consisted of travels into highly uncivilized parts of the world, so he got an appropriate hat.





This voodoo doll can be made into some pretty stunning look-alikes.

Smørebrød

Finally, Smørebrød was sold last week... to some couple who'll care well for it, since they owned an 850 before already.
I managed to transfer a plethora of things to ShabuShabu before leaving Smørebrød - from a glass teardrop and a paper fertility fetish (protecting from accidents) to an orange warning vest, one million city guides and street maps, and a pair of starter cables.
Smørebrød always served us well, and carries a lot of good memories away with it.

Random

BT town hall.



Röhrensee animal park ducks. Very cold weather, very aggressive ducks, fighting fiercely with each other.


A sad kwakduck (actually a mutant Haribo Salziger Hering).


ShabuShabu closeup.

Snow Fun

BT has some nearby snow fun facilities, too. Oberwarmensteinach (a name as German as it gets) even has a floodlit slope:





The last times I have seen a skiing slope... or any snow-covered area at all... were all on glaciers:


The Columbia Icefield of the Athabasca Glacier in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.


Snowboarding on the Stubaitaler Gletscher in Austria.


And most recently, the Jungfraujoch glacier in Switzerland.



This last one was full of ants, though :-). In any case, the climate catastrophe seems to be some years to go, still.